Luna's Reappears

The Issas add Mexican to the downtown Ahmos.

In early October, the Issa family brought something new to their Ahmo's Gyros & Deli location at Huron and Division: an entire Mexican restaurant. Luna's Mexican Street Food now shares the building.

The name may be familiar if you ate at the Michigan Union food court before the building closed for renovation. Majed Issa, one of the restaurant's owners, says he and his family (entrepreneurs who own both Ahmo's and Issa Properties) opened the fast-casual experiment two years ago, in part because so many of the chefs at Ahmo's were of Mexican heritage. In developing the menu, "I pretty much watched and listened and just let them be creative," he says.

They were still working out things in their small station in the Union basement when the building's year-and-a-half closure was announced, putting Luna's on hiatus. "People didn't want to wait, so we opened it up in here," says Issa.

The move also gave him the chance to do a number of renovations to the building, which had received minimal updates since the flagship Ahmo's opened in 1998. The Issas got rid of the floor tile, the drop ceiling, the drink coolers, and the desert mural--"everything you see in the dining room," says Issa. They went instead with a simple modern look, with light and dark woods and brushed metal.

Though the Luna's and Ahmo's counters are on adjoining sides of a main room corner, the two are separate entities. If you want some churros to go with your gyro, you'll have to get in line twice. Luckily the Issas have a plan to keep the lines moving: they'll be adding self-order kiosks for Ahmo's and for Luna's alongside their main counters.